Up Front

By The Editors

Published: April 2, 2006

The publication of new poetry from Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79) is always an event -- she won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, yet during her lifetime she published only some 90 poems. On this week's cover, our poetry columnist, David Orr, reviews ''Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments,'' edited by The New Yorker's poetry editor, Alice Quinn. It's one of this year's most important poetry books.

In 1969, Bishop's ''Complete Poems'' was reviewed in these pages by the poet John Ashbery, who also remarked on the scarcity of Bishop's work. Ashbery's review began: ''One hopes that the title of Elizabeth Bishop's new book is an error and that there will be more poems and at least another 'Complete Poems.' . . . Like other addicting substances, this work creates a hunger for itself: the more one tastes it, the less of it there seems to be.''

Ashbery didn't claim to admire everything Bishop wrote. Some of the poems from Bishop's second collection, ''A Cold Spring'' (1955), he commented, ''were not, for me, up to the perhaps impossibly high standards set by the first book. Several seemed content with picture-making.'' Still, he noted: ''from the moment Miss Bishop appeared on the scene it was apparent to everybody that she was a poet of strange, even mysterious, but undeniable and great gifts. . . . One of her poems is enough to convince you that you are in expert hands and can relax and enjoy the ride.'' The Editors

On the Web

Featured Author: A retrospective on the career of Elizabeth Bishop, the author of ''Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box.''

Audio: Colson Whitehead reads from ''Apex Hides the Hurt.''

First Chapters: Excerpts from ''Doctors & Nurses,'' by Lucy Ellmann; ''To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever,'' by Will Blythe; and other books.

Podcast: Subscribe to an audio program featuring the editors of the Book Review discussing the week's issue.